2. Eleven of the 20 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.

Time has the full list here. In second place is Finland, with two entries.

All a big coinky-dink, I’m sure.

I also I agree with this, indeed as applied to any public figure. Arguments may be more or less effective depending on the context and this shouldn’t be ignored, but there’s no “non-political” reaction of a prominent politician to mass killings. And this very much includes pretending that access to guns and ammunition isn’t a public policy issue with serious consequences.

…Also, I’m sure there will be narrative that Connecticut, being in New England at all, must have incredibly stringent gun control regulations, which shows that gun control doesn’t work. Leaving aside the fact that all state (as opposed to federal) gun regulations are going to be of relatively limited value in a country with open interstate borders, Connecticut does not have particularly stringent gun control laws — they are middle of the road by American standards and extremely lax by international ones.

Comments (169)

The fact that over 75% of the guns used in mass shootings in the US are legally obtained is what struck me. I mean people can say that a big part of the issue is that we need to prioritize mental health, but you still have to come around to the fact that east access to guns is the bigger part.

As James Fallows pointed out, when people go crazy in other countries it’s with a knife, not a gun, and those little kids don’t end up dead.

If my favorite toy kept being used, over and fucking over, to kill people, then even if I myself had never misused that toy, I’d like to think I’d be okay with giving it up. I’d like to think I’d want to give it up. I’d like to think most people are not selfish assholes.

Nobody is arguing for easy access. I just don’t want access removed, or punitively proscribed, for everyone else.

@Semanticleo

Let’s be clear. This event is being used as a tool for the left’s long standing agenda of more and more gun control.
I can remember perusing through the Sear & Roebuck catalog and looking at pistols and high power rifles that would ship directly to your home no questions asked, acreoss state lines and with no registration whatsoever. And yet, few of these events happened during that period.
So, one must conclude that although access was easier, mass murders such as this one in Conn. were much more rare.
More and more gun control is treating the symptom, and not the disease. History has demonstrated that it will not work.

What we should be focusing on is why individuals are raging more now than they have in the past against strangers if you truly are interested in solving the problem.

If you’re just interested in pushing your agenda, then this is probably your opportunity to rile the masses.

I deal with information, but when information is sparse, I deal in heuristics, which to Old Schoolers, means brainstorming. I start with the concept ofcui bono, then proceed from there. It cannot be
proven beyond a shadow, but those who want to see
the truth will understand there is an overarching agenda to everything we see happen. Be wary. Be circumspect. And by all means, be self-aware

I can remember perusing through the Sear & Roebuck catalog and looking at pistols and high power rifles that would ship directly to your home no questions asked, acreoss state lines and with no registration whatsoever.

Yeah, they used to do that with dynamite, too. Even if you were anarchist or Muslim. You down with that?

More than 20,000 deaths are due to prescription drugs, but it would also just as little sense to say they, too, have no value because they are misused by a few.

But beyond that, the political value of firearms is material. It’s the last option of the people against a tyrannical government. This was the basis for the second amendment…not hunting and not crime prevention.

Before the US entered WW II and was in a support role, there were programs where the Brits would beg for guns…any guns…hunting rifles, handguns..pretty much anything…because they had tried to suppress firearms and upon entering the war, couldn’t crank up their manufacturing fast enough so here they were begging the people of the US for guns.

It’s a fair argument to weigh the value of guns to society to the damage, but your blanket statement is just goofy.

I thought I had seen you make some goofy statements in the past, but your thoughtless and purely emotional statement about guns above takes the prize.

Considering that any likely tyranny here will be fascist, and that JenBob, for one, would like to be the first to welcome our new fascist overlords, this is particular ironistical, in the Alanis Morrisette sense of the term.

Indeed. I am just popping the delusional balloon about guns and self-defense (against other people). As I have said, I do not object to guns in principle, but certainly think we need to regulate them much more stringently than we do now. It is also the case that buying a gun for defense is generally a waste of money.

Some one who believes in data and facts would not continue to link to popular reporting on the incredibly flawed Branas study for support. Comparing those who were assaulted and shot to a control group of people in Philadelphia who answered their phone is incredibly flawed.

According to the authors of the paper,
“shooting case participants were significantly more often Hispanic, more frequently working in high-risk occupations1 or unemployed, less educated, and had a greater frequency of prior arrest. At the time of shooting, case participants were also significantly more often involved with alcohol and drugs, outdoors and more likely to be located in areas with illicit drug trafficking.

The only meaningful take away from that study is being involved in the drug trade in Philly is dangerous.

And you totally ignore the study about guns in the home, which suffers none of those supposed defects. You also provide no contrary evidence. The US has the 12th highest rate of gun deaths in the world, putting it in third world territory and far higher than any other developed country.

The Mumbai attacks were a paramilitary operation using guns and bombs, carried out by ten people over four days. The only mass shooting on that list with more than one shooter was Columbine. It’s not a reasonable comparison.

Assuming you’re referring to the 2008 Mumbai shooting, it’s of very limited relevance to the question of gun control given that the attackers there were armed for their attack in Pakistan, most likely by Pakistani intelligence and/or the military.

Agree and your comment is an insult to our intelligence (and yours). The list also does not include any other terrorist attacks or military/paramilitary operations. You are the one being deliberately obtuse here.

Well, forgive me for thinking of the Mumbai shootings when I hear someone has put together a “worst shootings” list since the last surviving shooter was executed recently.

DrDick, you really are living up to your name and I don’t see why you are going to such lengths to be such a jerk right now. I’m not insulting your intelligence, but I am willing to look past your repeated attacks on me for no reason to all to admit including Mumbai would lead to too wide a definition of “mass shooting” because of

1. Time frame
2. Paramilitary training — but not the weapons used! If you discount an attack simply because the suspect has a semiautomatic then some school shootings in the US are no longer mass shootings.
3. Group of shooters
4. Funded and supported by individuals or groups outside of those taking direct part in the shooting.

#3 is problematic. And if you take a moment to stop insulting me, I think you might even agree. A lone gunman over a few hours max should qualify. Do two? What about three? Mumbai was perpetrated with ten men, which is clearly “a lot.” But where is the dividing line between a terrorist squad and what would qualify as a “mass shooting”?

So does that mean it would be unconstitutional even to propose the repeal of that provision? I mean, does that phrase actually have some special significance in constitutionalspeak, or is it just legalese for “you can pry it from my cold dead fingers”?

So prisoners in their prisons still have an unquestioned right to be armed? or are they deemed non longer citizens?

This is a fair question. In most state, convicted felons lose some of their rights. And this really makes sense because a crime is a wrong against society. Some cannot vote and yes, some cannot possess guns.

Do you want convicted felons to have guns? Is that what your complaining about?

I look forward to every staff member of every right wing blog explaining to each and every parent in Connecticut why the right to unlimited firepower on demand is more important than their childrens’ lives were.

ok, good additional one, but still unlikely to be of sufficient scale to keep a seemingly sane mass murderer from tracking one down even if somehow all new guns sales were outlawed, which, of course, they wouldn’t be even if we adopted this policy.

Perfect is the enemy of the good, etc. Holding reforms to a standard of perfection isn’t how we improve public policy. Would raising the costs (broadly speaking) of acquiring guns provides sufficient benefit (fewer gun deaths) to justify the burdens on law-abiding good gun owners, or whatever. There are numerous good policies we could enact.

i don’t think you’re reading me correctly, logistics: i don’t have much hope that there’s much we can do at this late date, but what i actually said was that your idea added a third option to the couple i have that give me any hope at all.

i most certainly did not say “well, that’s not a perfect solution, so we shouldn’t do it,” which is what you appear to have read.

Really interesting fact that gun ownership in the US is actually falling (although this could have something to do with declining report rates; I can’t tell if this is factored in). If it’s true, the decline in gun ownership parallels the decline in gun assaults in the past two decades. You would think a decrease in gun ownership and lower and lower rates of “rational” assaults (i.e. assults with a motive of taking stuff or securing territory etc) combined with a relative increase in irrational assults like spree killings would start making gun control look politically appealing.

If we’re purely discussing policy, I’d actually go the other way around.

Small handguns are shit for defending ones home and person compared to other options. What they’re great for is concealing in your pocket until you’re ready to take it out and do something awful with it.

Similarly, assault weapons are just that; assault weapons. They’re designed to be used to storm places.

If you wanted to prevent gun crime and horrible massacres, but still leave people reasonable options to defend themselves and their homes, you’d want to encourage long arms. Shotguns and rifles. ACTUAL rifles, not assault rifles.

Once upon a time, the NRA encouraged this vision of responsible gun ownership, as opposed to being run by crazy people who think that everyone in the US should walk around with twin Tek-9s and a SAW in their trunk.

I don’t understand why the NRA and the right has decided to be absolutist on this point.

The NRA is a fundraising organization.

As for the right, a decade ago, being against gun control was winning wedge politics in the “heartland vs. coastal elites,” Republican-majority structure of American politics. In a situation like that, the incentive is to turn anything, in matter how reasonable, into an opportunity for us-vs-them.

If the tax were too, high, I’m sure the court would determine that this was a sufficient indirect burden on second amendment rights. But I think there is a lot of room to play between cheap and $1000. You don’t need more than a few bullets to protect ya prahpatee or whatever. Non-sporting ammunition should be really expensive or limited in amount per purchase (I’m thinking of how they monitor cough medicine for meth usage).

I think going after bullets is the right approach – give very limited allotments to people with each gun, maybe with special disposition for shooting ranges, and control access like pseudoephidrine at pharmacies. I’d love to have gun owners defend their need to extended mags for ‘self defense’.

Because ammo is so cheap now (but ironically often hard to get due to wingnut panic the last 4 years) not many gun owners make their own ammo, but just a few decades ago such a practice was common. My step father, a part-time gunsmith, routinely made his own ammo long after it stopped saving him money just because it’s what he always did, and also because his stuff was more reliable than most brands of ammo. (Yes, there is a big difference in ammo reliability depending on the brand.)

Even now the equipment is relatively inexpensive. Casings can be re-used in most cases, both for bullets and shotgun shells. The rest is just a matter of buying common items like lead bars and shot.

So, even if you found a way to make bullets ultra-expensive people would find a way around it.

Look, I support gun control laws in principle, but in order to address America’s illness in this matter we probably have to address the root cause as well as reduce the availability of these tools of mass murder. Reich wing media – which went from the fringe to mass media following the death of the Fairness Doctrine in 1986 – is probably one of the biggest contributors to this culture because it has created a massive violently paranoid population by preying on the minds of those who are predisposed to believe that shit. Note that other countries in the “first” world that experience these kind of incidents are not coincidentally countries that also have a strong presence of Murdoch Media – countries like Australia and the UK. The neonazi mass killer in Sweden was also a steady consumer of reich wing propoganda.

Yeah, I know, dealing with that root cause means you now have to fight the first amendment as well as the second. It’s not an easy solution – but if you won’t solve the problem without addressing that cause.

I have nothing intelligent to add to this discussion, but while violent crime in general is in free-fall, this kind of pointless mass shooting seems to be a monthly event. Hell, we had two THIS BLEEDING WEEK. TWO. IN ONE WEEK.

There were anti-choice activists outside my metro stop on the way home with signs comparing abortion to the Cambodian genocide. Usually I ignore or simply glare at these people, but I’d been reading about Newtown on the train, and I just said without being able to stop myself “Jesus Christ, people, there was a REAL massacre today.” One of the men said “What’s fake about this one?” Ummm… I just kept walking.